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A man who thought he was having a heart attack took police on a high-speed chase on Route 59 Thursday night.

Police say at 817 p.m. a US Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer was checking on a motorist parked along the road near Rimrock and found 30-year-old David Miller of Johnsonburg “in an excited state,” and learned that he thought he was having a heart attack.

The officer saw what he believed to be drug paraphernalia in the vehicle and, while he was calling for help, Miller drove away toward Warren, driving at speeds up to 85 mph. State police stopped Miller just east of Route 6.

Miller was taken into custody without further incident. He was taken to Warren General Hospital for treatment after complaining of difficulty breathing and chest pains, and police said charges are pending the outcomes of blood tests.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed a new law making it a crime in New York to intentionally access child pornography on the Internet.

The New York Supreme Court ruled in May that the state law prohibiting possessing or procuring pornographic images of children applied to downloaded files, but did not apply to temporary files automatically stored from sites that were merely viewed.

The law that took effect Friday makes it a felony for anyone who "knowingly accesses, with intent to view" any performance of a sexual act by a child younger than 16. Offenders can face up to four years in prison.

A half-naked man believed to be under the influence bath salts is accused of throwing a cinder block at a state police corporal this morning, and injuring him.

Police say they got a report at around 7:45 about a half-naked man walking around Route 6 in Pike Township in Potter County, and found a vehicle belonging to 36-year-old Stephen Berds of Youngstown, New York. The National Crime Information Center listed BERDS as missing and endangered.

Police found Berds behind a camp, and that’s when he threw the cinder block at Cpl. Eric McKean and then tried to run away. Police used a Taser on Berds to take him into custody.

The cinder block hit and injured McKean’s right forearm, but he refused medical treatment.

Berds is charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, resisting arrest, open lewdness and summary harassment. The charges were filed with District Judge Delores Weiss. Berds is awaiting arraignment.

The St. Bonaventure University community will hold a prayer service to honor those killed Sept. 11, 2001.

The service begins at 12:50 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 11, and will be held at the university’s 9/11 Memorial, which is located adjacent to St. Joseph’s Oratory just south of Café La Verna. The memorial was moved from its original site next to Plassmann Hall due to construction of the university’s new business center.

Tuesday’s program is open to the public; visitor parking is available nearby at the Magnano Centre dining complex.

The prayer service will be led by Fr. Francis Di Spigno, O.F.M., executive director of University Ministries. Also participating will be the ROTC Color Guard, as well as the men’s rugby team, who will distribute prayer cards.

Rob Perazza, who played rugby for St. Bonaventure, was one of three St. Bonaventure alumni killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. The others are Amy Doherty and Father Mychal Judge, known as "The Saint of 9/11."

The City of Olean is expected to take the next step forward in developing its 500-acre Brownfields Opportunity Area.

During its meeting Tuesday common council is expected to approve a resolution that would authorize Mayor Linda Witte to enter into an agreement with Bergman Associates for consulting services to update and expand the pre-nomination study prepared in 2007.

Part of the area in North Olean is the 62-acre former Agway-Felmont site, which was once home to the Socony Vacuum Oil Company. In 1930 a fire caused thousands of gallons of oil to spill onto, and seep into, the ground.

The state’s Brownfield Opportunity Area Program provides financial and technical assistance to municipalities to revitalize brownfield sites.

Destinations-Bradford is hosting four programs in the month of September that are FREE and open to the public. These are offered along with the general outreach offered through Community Care program.

The free shared clothing closet is scheduled on both Saturday, September 8th from 9am to 12 noon and Wednesday, September 26th from 1-3pm. Gently used and new clothing is available for all ages and sexes and genders and is available to individuals and their personal household.

Veggie Gardening will be held on Wednesday, September 12th at 1pm at the Destinations-Bradford office and taught by Jim Machuga. No matter what size your farm, from patio to acres, this class helps newcomers to gardening learn the basics of composting, planting, maintenance and harvesting. Gardening can aide with healthy food choices, promote physical and social activity and help persons and families cut food expenses.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People will be held on Wednesday, August 19th at 1pm i…

A man has pleaded guilty to stealing $210,000 worth of quarters while he worked as a parking meter mechanic for the City of Buffalo.

57-year-old James Bagarozzo of Buffalo started stealing the money back in 2003 and kept taking it until December of last year when surveillance cameras caught him doing it.

The US attorney’s office says Bagarozzo intentionally damaged more than 75 parking meters to make it easier to steal the quarters inserted into the meters. He then put the quarters in bags in his car or his pants pockets. Bank employees say he regularly made deposits of $500 worth of quarters.

He faces up to 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced on December 17.

His co-worker, Lawrence Charles, pleaded guilty earlier this week to stealing at least $15,000 from the meters between 2007 and last year.

Harrisburg – A new state law imposing stiff penalties on motorists who ignore “road closed” or other safety warning signs and devices is now in effect, PennDOT said today.

Act 114, signed on July 5 by Governor Tom Corbett, reinforces the critical need for all drivers to obey traffic control signs. The law aims to increase safety for motorists and emergency responders in areas where flooding or other hazardous conditions exist.

“Too often, motorists decide their immediate needs outweigh the safety warning signs and they ignore them, which increases hazards for them and emergency responders,” said PennDOT Secretary Barry J. Schoch. “This law underscores that we take safety seriously. When motorists are confronted with emergency road closures, we urge them to use common sense and obey the signs that are placed to keep them safe.”

Under the law, motorists who drive around or through signs or traffic control devices closing a road or highway due to hazardous conditions will have two points ad…

By Kimberly Marcott WeinbergAssistant Director of Communications and Marketing

Alex Nazemetz, director of admissions at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, always knows what time it is in Beijing, just a part of recruiting Pitt-Bradford’s largest group of international students ever.

This year Pitt-Bradford is welcoming its largest group of international students ever – three times as many as came to Pitt-Bradford in 2011. As classes got under way last week, they included 32 new international students from Gambia, Germany, South Korea, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, but mostly from China.

The new students – nearly 10 percent of the freshman class – bring the total number of international students on campus to 48.

The learning curve for Nazemetz, who does most of the international recruitment himself, has been steep. For example, international students are often interested in different things than domestic students, things that Nazemetz has found out thro…

State Rep. Matt Gabler (R-Clearfield/Elk) on Wednesday hosted a ceremony honoring the veterans who served our country during the Vietnam War era. Attending the event, which was held at VFW Post 813, 114 Fuller St., DuBois, were 126 veterans and their guests.

“It is incredibly important to take time to thank the many veterans who have served our country,” Gabler said. “The sacrifices these brave men and women have made allow us to live the lives we lead and enjoy the freedoms we share as Americans.”

Among those in attendance were U.S. Congressman Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-5) and state Sen. Bob Robbins (R-50), the program’s guest speaker who completed two tours of duty in Vietnam and received numerous medals for his service.

Gabler also announced during the ceremony his sponsorship of legislation to recognize veterans who were exposed to the chemical defoliant known as Agent Orange during their time of service in the Vietnam War Era.

A Johnsonburg man is in jail on drug charges after state police executed a search warrant at his home this morning.

At 6:10 a.m. police went to the 2nd Avenue home of 54-year-old Edward Joseph Pisani and found a Glock .40 caliber handgun, about 5 pounds of processed marijuana, 32 marijuana plants and drug paraphernalia, including controlled substance manufacturing equipment.

District Judge Tony King arraigned Pisani on charges of unlawful manufacturing of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

A convicted killer from Chautauqua County has been sentenced again in a homicide case from 11 years ago.

41-year-old Gregory Pattison has been sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.He pleaded guilty to reduced charges of manslaughter for the shooting deaths of Richard Alicea and Johnny Houston in the Town of Gerry back in 2001.

Pattison's original murder conviction was overturned on a technicality.

A truck driver from Niagara Falls, Canada, is dead after a crash along the New York State Thruway in the Town of Pomfret earlier tonight.

State Police say around 7:00 p.m. on the eastbound I-90 63-year-old John Odell drifted from the right lane across the right shoulder and hit a delineator. The truck then traveled through a culvert and came to a rest inside the tree line.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania today announced the return of a two-count indictment against Thomas Edward Smith, age 58, of Emporium, Pennsylvania. The indictment charges Smith with taking a motor vehicle by force and violence and using a firearm during a crime of violence.

According to United States Attorney Peter J. Smith, the indictment alleges that on August 8, 2012 Smith pretended to be working on a car parked along a street in Emporium and flagged down an employee of Citizens & Northern Bank. He entered the vehicle and pulled out a handgun. The indictment alleges that Smith then directed the victim to drive to the Citizens & Northern Bank branch in Emporium. Smith allegedly told the victim this would be “the worst day of her life,” that the victim and the bank had taken his house away from him in a bank foreclosure, and that the victim and another bank employee were now “going to pay for it,” or words to that effect.…

The Fall semester of the Spectrum Series at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford is packed with thought-provoking and fun plays, concerts, art exhibits and more.

Spectrum, the longest running arts series at Pitt-Bradford, will open its theater season on Sept. 18 with Thaddeus Phillips’ “17 Border Crossings,” a theatrical trip around the world and through time that examines the arbitrary nature of borders and passports. The show features the real stories of adventurous border crossings and will explore events like the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as the catalyst for the Arab Spring.

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. in the Studio Theater located in Blaisdell Hall. Tickets cost $6 for the public and $2 for students.

Spectrum’s first featured writer of the season will be biographer and poet Molly Peacock. Peacock’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review and “The Best of the Best American Poetry.” She has received award…

BUFFALO — With the ability to sequence human genes comes an onslaught of raw material about the genetic characteristics that distinguish us, and wading through these reserves of data poses a major challenge for life scientists. Researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) and the Center for Human Genome Variation at Duke University Medical Center (DUMC) have developed an approach for analyzing data that can help researchers studying genetic factors in disease to quickly cull out relevant genetic patterns and identify variants that lead to particular disorders.

The researchers outline this new approach in a study published in the September issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics. They note that while genome-wide association studies (GWASs), which analyze the DNA of many people in order to reveal genetic variations associated with disease, have reported thousands of variants associated with different traits, it’s very difficult to isolate “causal variants,” those genetic i…

Former baseball player Bobby Wyant of Titusville, Pa., and softball and golf athlete Kristy Zavinski of Warren, Pa., are the newest inductees into the Athletic Hall of Fame at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

The two, who were chosen by a committee of coaches, alumni, and faculty and staff, will be inducted during Pitt-Bradford’s Alumni and Family Weekend. They will be honored at a ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 29, at 10:30 a.m., in the Mukaiyama University Room located in the Frame-Westerberg Commons.

“I was fortunate enough to be here when both Kristy and Bobby began their career at Pitt-Bradford,” said athletics director Lori Mazza. “They both had certain intangibles you cannot teach.

“Certainly, their athletic abilities speak for themselves, but what impressed me the most was their ability to balance the rigors of academics, the friendships they formed, their emotion for the game, and their passion to win, all while never losing sight of being a part of a team.”

Educator and author LouAnne Johnson will visit St. Bonaventure University for a Monday, Sept. 10, program titled “The Power of Choice.” Her address, which will focus on the power of student choice, begins at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the William F. Walsh Science Center on campus.

The program, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the university’s Clare College, School of Education, the Visiting Scholars Committee, and the Council for Exceptional Children.

Johnson is a former U.S. Navy journalist, Marine Corps officer and high school teacher. She is the author of 10 books, including the international bestseller “Dangerous Minds,” the award-winning young adult novel “Muchacho,” and “Teaching Outside the Box: How to Grab Your Students by Their Brains.”

Michelle Pfeiffer starred in the August 1995 box office hit “Dangerous Minds,” which was based on Johnson’s book (original title “My Posse Don’t Do Homework”). “Dangerous Minds” has been published in eight languages, including Italia…

Members of St. Bonaventure University’s Xi Nu chapter of Kappa Delta Pi received recognition for a literacy program they developed for the Olean Child Daycare Center.

KDP is the international honors society in education with the mission of honoring the achievements of educators while promoting excellence in education. Through Literacy Alive!, KDP chapters from across the country are asked to create a literacy-focused community service program that could be submitted to a board for review.

For their program, 16 members of Xi Nu developed a two-pronged plan to help replace the books, movies and toys that had been destroyed by a flood at the OCDC and to combat early childhood literacy issues.

In the fall, KDP members held a book, CD and DVD drive on campus. Additionally, members sold tote bags to generate money for the center. KDP co-presidents Amy Jones, ’12, and Elizabeth Moran, ’12, presented OCDC with a check for $100, which was used to buy each child at the daycare center a book for…

The First Presbyterian Church of Bradford, 54 East Corydon Street, will begin the 2012-2013 Sunday School year on Sunday, September 9, 2012.

Classes for children and youth ranging from nursery through senior high school will start at 9:30 a.m. each week. An adult education class taught by the Rev. Lee Beckes will begin at 9:45 a.m. The children and youth classes will be using the “Grow, Proclaim, and Serve” curriculum by Cokesbury Publishing for the Sunday School year. Classes, which meet weekly, will include a Bible lesson, craft activities, and music.

A “tailgating” party will be held in the church parking lot on the first day of Sunday School and will include singing favorite “Sunday School” songs, face painting, a ‘fan’ making craft, and ice cream sandwiches.

A Chapel worship service is held each Sunday at 8:45 a.m., and a Sanctuary worship service will begin at 11:00 a.m.

For additional information contact the Christian Education office, or church office at the First Presbyte…

Director Cindy Graham is seeking "four fun-loving gals who can work, play and sing their way into the hearts of BLT audiences" when she holds auditions Monday and Tuesday (Sept. 10 and 11) for "The Marvelous Wonderettes."

Tryouts will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at Hill Memorial United Methodist Church, 44 Kennedy St. Call-backs will be Sept. 12 and 13, and possibly Sept. 14.

Created and written by Roger Bean, “The Marvelous Wonderettes” shows the girl quartet entertaining at their 1958 senior prom and again ten years later at their class reunion. The two-act musical will be offered Oct. 25 through 28 at First United Presbyterian Church social hall on East Corydon Street in Bradford. The first three shows will be at 7:30 p.m.; the final show will be a 2 p.m. matinee.

Music director Andrew Dutko said preferred audition songs would be popular tunes from the 1950s and 1960s. Accompaniment on CD is encouraged; sheet music is required otherwise. He noted that actresses will b…

Bradford Police are looking for the person who vandalized a statue outside of St. Bernard’s Church over the weekend.

Church officials called police Monday morning to say the marble angel statue was removed from its pedestal and broken. Two pieces of the statue were on the ground but the head of the statue is still missing.

The statue was donated to the church two years ago in honor of deceased children.

Anyone with information on this incident is asked to contact Bradford City Police.

A St. Marys man is facing charges for running over a woman with his pickup truck Sunday night.

Police say 60-year-old Lee Reider was on Liberty Road at 10:30 p.m. when hit the woman, causing multiple injuries that had to be treated at Elk Regional Health Center. Police did not release the woman’s name.

Reider was arrested Monday and arraigned on charges of assault, recklessly endangering another person and harassment. He’s in Elk County Jail.

A Salamanca man is in jail without bail after taking police on a chase early this morning.

Sheriff’s deputies say they attempted to stop 44-year-old Richard Skye on Route 353 in Little Valley, but he did not stop. He led them on a chase into the Town of Ellicottville, where the chase ended when he drove his vehicle up a seasonal road.

Skye is charged with unlawful fleeing from a police officer, reckless endangerment, reckless driving and unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. He is also facing a parole violation and multiple vehicle and traffic charges.

The Cameron County man accused of kidnapping a woman at gunpoint a month ago is behind bars in Potter County.

58-year-old Thomas Smith was picked up at the Allegany Pub in Emporium at about 8:45 last night and after being arraigned was sent to jail on $75,000 bail.

Police say they got a tip at about 8:10 last night saying Smith was at the bar. Emporium Borough Police and state police surrounded the bar, and about half an hour later Smith called them and said he wanted to turn himself in.